


Obsessive Minds

by JazzBaby466



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Pre-Bacchanal, Pretentious discussions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 20:07:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9254480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzBaby466/pseuds/JazzBaby466
Summary: Julian introduces them to the idea of the bacchanalia.Henry is intrigued.Francis thinks back to this day years later and wonders whether he should have recognized Henry's intense fascination, drawn certain conclusions from it, behaved differently, changed things...





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taeyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taeyn/gifts).



Years later, long after the fateful chain of unfortunate events has been set into motion, Francis begins to wonder whether maybe there was a point, early on, where he should have seen it all coming. Most of the time, he tries to assure himself that there is no way he could have been expected to foresee the irreversible tragedies that lay ahead. And yet, deep down, he cannot help but return in his mind, again and again, to that meaningful period of time toward the beginning of the semester, shortly before Richard joined them; those days when Henry was so ill. And more importantly, he cannot shake the feeling that from just a few moments, he should have been able to infer the entire structure of Henry’s mind, and from that further infer the perils for which they were all headed. Francis tries to assure himself, time and again, that there is no way he could have known, and yet he awakes every morning with the taste of guilt on his tongue, bitter and burned like the scorched earth they danced on.

 

Early in the semester, when summer still lingered while autumn patiently awaited its turn and the joyous green of the leaves outside was only interspersed with a few singular spots of yellow and red, Julian introduced them to the idea of the bacchanalia. Being the good teacher that he was, he guided them gently into this territory, in a way so subtle that Francis cannot even remember the time he first mentioned them. Possibly, it started out with small remarks about the burden of self-awareness and the ultimate appeal of becoming one with everything. Possibly, he talked about Dionysus slightly more often, in a playful, casual way. Francis cannot say how many of these remarks were made that went over his head, but he’s sure of one thing: Henry perked up his ears at the very first and, from then on, didn’t miss a single one of them.

The first thing Francis remembers with any certainty is a particular lecture Julian held a few weeks into the term, when they had all found their rhythm and the inflections of Greek and Latin were beginning to lose the foreignness they had acquired over the summer and instead sounded more familiar and native to Francis’s ears again. It was a slow and peaceful morning, rays of light shining into the Lyceum at a gentle angle, and the steam of their tea (green, which, Julian maintained, was best for mental clarity) rising from their cups in a tranquilizing slow swirl. This was the atmosphere that Francis liked to study in; the kind no class but Julian’s could offer.

“Allow me”, Julian said, when they were all settled in their seats and ready to begin, “to start with a question.” He smiled gently when their curious eyes met his. “What”, he asked then, after a small pause, “is the single thing we’d most like to rid ourselves of?”

After only a beat of silence, Camilla spoke up.

“Lust”, she said, and when Bunny giggled moronically and immaturely, she regarded him only with a coolly raised eyebrow.

“Very well”, Julian nodded contemplatively. “Other suggestions?”

“Sin”, said Charles suddenly, and Francis turned and stared at him. He seemed uncharacteristically uneasy. His cheeks were slightly flushed.

“That may be your Catholic upbringing speaking”, Julian winked, then turned to Francis, who hadn’t expected that they might all be forced to give an answer and felt put on the spot.

“Francis?”, Julian probed gently, when he didn’t speak up.

In the periphery of his vision, Charles’s handsome face glowed in the sunlight, and, looking down at his hands and feeling a tinge of red creep into his cheeks, Francis quietly said: “Desire.”

“Lust, sin, and desire”, Julian repeated slowly, nodding along, before he turned to Bunny. “And what do you have to add, Edmund?”

“Well”, said Bunny, and from the lazy grin on his face, Francis could already tell that he was about to come up with something exceptionally stupid and not at all appropriate for the question. “Personally, I’d like to rid the world of a number of things, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes”, Julian said, no longer smiling but looking at Bunny piercingly. “But what, dear Edmund, would you most like to rid _yourself_ of? That, you see, was the question.”

“Oh, um, in that case…” Bunny leaned back in his chair. “Things like hunger maybe? That would be convenient, I suppose.”

Julian seemed satisfied. “These are all valid suggestions”, he said, then found Henry’s eye, where his inquiring sparkle was met with cautious attentiveness. “But I would suggest that they can all be summarized in a single word. Henry?”

“The self”, came the prompt reply. Henry looked intrigued. He was watching Julian, barely moving, his lips slightly parted. “Is that what you mean?”

“That”, Julian told him happily, “is precisely what I mean. All the things you mentioned are desires, urges. These and everything else that may become a burden from time to time, things like dreams and memories, the sum of which keeps us from experiencing life fully and clearly, are rooted in the ego, the self.”

“The ego?”, repeated Camilla, watching Julian calmly while raising her cup of tea to her mouth and taking a small tentative sip.

“Yes, my dear. We may, you see, define ourselves as tripartite beings, consisting, for one, of the deepest, most brutish urges: that animal part at the core of our soul. Then, also, of everything controlled and cultured, the part that comprises our ethical principles and ideals and every idea of how we ought to be. Lastly, of course, there’s the part we are most aware of, the part that defines us, the part constantly preoccupied with managing both our urges and our ideals, negotiating between the two. We may refer to them as the Id, the Superego and the Ego.”

At that, Francis straightened his back and looked up at Julian. “Why are we using psychoanalytic terminology?”, he asked, unable to keep the undercurrent of hostility out of his voice.

“Oh, yes, I remember”, Julian replied with a sort of tragic regret and a grave nod. “You are not the biggest fan of psychoanalysis, Francis, are you?”

Francis only confirmed this with a brief nod. _Six hours of Reichian analysis a week as a child made sure of that_ , he thought bitterly.

“We can refer to these parts of ourselves in whichever terms you like. Plato, of course, referred to them as the logical, the spirited and the appetitive part of the soul, which in Greek would be called… Henry?”

He smiled at Henry, who promptly named the three.

“ _Logistikon. Thymoeides. Epithymetikon.”_

“Precisely”, Julian commented, seeming pleased. “So, you see, different names have been found for these aspects of the soul overtime, but the great minds have always recognized its tripartite nature. The animal part, of course, the _epithymetikon_ or the Id, is the one that is most repressed in our lives. Francis, as you are so familiar with psychoanalysis, I’m sure you could mention a few of the mechanisms that have been suggested as means to repress the Id.”

Francis put his fingers around his cup to comfort himself with its warmth. Every memory he had from his childhood psychoanalysis sessions was uniformly unpleasant.

“It appears I have repressed that knowledge, too”, he replied stiffly, and Julian laughed.

“Very well, very well”, he said. “Repression is a strong mechanism, so I cannot blame you, Francis. Others that have been suggested include projection, which entails seeing the unwanted urges and desires in somebody else instead of the self, reaction formation, which is doing the exact opposite of what one secretly wishes to do, and sublimation, which is a way of channeling the forbidden desires into socially acceptable forms, such as the arts or sporting events. The Romans, of course, and we’ve talked about this before, were terribly repressed in their nature, a folk caught in a global suppression of all urges they deemed uncivilized and feral; in a way expressing on a big scale what each of us experience daily on a small one. Clearly, though, these feelings cannot be repressed into oblivion. They are too strong, too likely to rebound. If they are denied full manifestation, they must show themselves in some other way. Can you think of examples?”

“You mentioned the arts”, said Francis. “So those, and things like architecture, maybe. The Roman temples.”

“Yes, certainly”, Julian nodded.

“Gladiator fights are another prime example, I’d say”, added Henry.

“Oh, yes. Brilliant. And isn’t it funny to think that all those things, vases and festivals and impressive buildings and music and even poetry, all those things we consider so uniquely human, so wonderful, the epitome of culture, the noblest fruits of civilization, are driven by the very thing the Romans detested and tried to ban from their souls?”

“Wait”, said Charles unexpectedly, and Francis looked over to him. He sat on the edge of his chair, looking at Julian intently and with his head slightly cocked. “The other day we said that the Romans were wrong in suppressing all of their urges.”

“We had established that, yes”, Julian agreed.

“But what conclusion should we draw from that? If we were to… act on these urges and release their energy the moment they arise, would that not mean the end of all repression and, by your logic, the end of all culture?”

“That doesn’t seem very desirable”, Francis agreed.

To this, Henry replied with a small, irritated noise, something like a snort. In turn, an amused look appeared on Julian’s face and he asked: “Would you like me to pass that question on to you, Henry?”

In response, Henry nodded briskly, then turned to Charles. “Certainly, acting on all of our urges all the time cannot be the answer. That would be chaos, in the modern sense of the word. Mayhem. Madness. It would undermine every attempt at a society.”

“We _did_ say that the animal part of the soul shouldn’t be repressed”, Camilla said quietly, backing up Charles’s argument. “But if releasing it isn’t the answer, either…”

She trailed off uncertainly, looking first at Henry, then down at her tea, and Julian picked up the conversation again.

“Camilla, Charles, we are talking in extremes here. The Romans lived one of them. And at the opposite pole, we’d have what you, Charles, have suggested. However, as so often in life – and I’m sure you’ll come to agree with me the older you get and the more you mature – the solution lies in finding the most elegant medium form, a sort of middle ground. Like some kind of a pet, a dog, say, those urges don’t need constant attention to thrive. However, to keep with the analogy, much like a pet dog, they might easily turn feral if ignored altogether.”

“What you are suggesting then”, Francis said, feeling himself become increasingly intrigued. “is a full release, not constantly, but every once in a while. Yes?”

Julian smiled his benevolent smile at him. “Exactly. And, of course, the Greeks, in their wisdom, reached this conclusion long before any of us ever saw the light of this world. And what, can you tell me, did they call these collective moments of release?”

Of course, it was Henry who replied. “The festivals of Dionysus”, he said, looking alert. Then, more dreamily, he added: “The God of wine of theater and ecstasy and fertility.”

“And, one might add, of madness and aggression”, Julian added in a friendly tone. “Who, of course, the Romans referred to as…?”

This time, it was Camilla who answered. “Bacchus”, she said in a clear, certain voice.

“Precisely”, Julian said happily. “So, you see”, he turned to Charles with a faint smile, “the devotion to these feral parts of the mind doesn’t have to be the end of all civilization. If lived out ritually, at certain intervals, instead it can be a stabilizing element.”

After class, as they were walking out of the Lyceum, Camilla stayed back a little, letting Bunny and Charles go through the door ahead of her, and when Henry, who looked lost in thought, had caught up with her, she piped up cheerfully: “Henry. Come over for dinner tonight?” Then, catching sight of Francis’s curiously raised eyebrow, she smiled and added: “You, too, Francis. Charles and I will cook something nice.”

Charles, who was half-way out the door, turned his head at the mention of his name. “I will what?”

“Cook a nice meal for everyone with me”, she told him, still smiling warmly.

Henry shook his head a little, as if trying to shake off the daydream, then frowned at her. “But today’s Monday.”

“I know that”, Camilla laughed.

“We had dinner at your place yesterday”, Henry insisted.

“So? We’ll have dinner again! Charles and I don’t mind. We’re always glad to have you.”

“I could help with the cooking”, Francis offered. “It’s no trouble at all. I have a recipe in mind.”

“Thank you”, Camilla smiled at him. “See, Henry? Francis is coming.”

It took some more persuasion from her, but eventually everyone, except for Bunny who was going on a date with Marion, promised to meet up at the twins’ that night for dinner.

With Francis’s help, the meal, though rather spontaneous, turned out wonderfully, and they chatted happily through most of it, but Francis couldn’t help but notice that again, Henry seemed quieter and more absent-minded than normally.

A few times, he caught him staring at his plate with unseeing eyes. Once, when Charles addressed him directly, it took him a few seconds to even realize somebody was saying his name.

Eventually, Camilla, who had clearly picked up on the same things, paused, put down her fork and looked at him. “You’re awfully quiet”, she said in a tone of gentle inquiry. “Are you alright, Henry?”

“Yes, of course.” He looked up, almost startled. When nobody spoke, he added: “I’m just thinking.”

“About what?”, asked Charles and Henry looked at him with something like disbelief.

“The bacchanalia, of course. Aren’t you?”

 

At the time, of course, Francis didn’t think much of it. It was only in retrospect that this particular one of Julian’s classes and the dinner at the twins’ that followed took on a dire significance.

The fact that Henry, from this first lecture on, became so irrevocably captivated by the idea of the bacchanalia; the fact that almost instantly, he began researching them, with the type of obsessiveness that drives every man in the history of mankind who has ever done anything exceptionally great or terrible… The very next morning in class, Francis found him already at the table, deeply absorbed in a text entitled “De Defectu Oraculorum” by Plutarch. He looked tired, and when Francis asked – jokingly, more than anything – whether he had spent the entire night reading instead of sleeping, he confirmed this, tersely and distractedly, and with a hint of annoyance, as if to say that Francis should really know better than to ask questions with such obvious answers. This fact, he thinks, should have told him everything he needed to know about Henry. It should have revealed to him his determination and brilliance, and – most importantly – his willingness to achieve what he had set his mind to, even at a great personal cost.

Julian, Francis knew, possessed the same kind of metal focus. What a dangerous thing, Francis muses, to acquaint such obsessive minds.

When Henry met Julian, he was young and energized and thirsting for knowledge like a man in the desert thirsts for water. He was even thirstier, though, for something great, some experience entirely out of the ordinary.

Julian – and this is something Francis only realized much later, when Julian was long gone – had looked at him and seen it all. In fact, he had looked at all of them, and he had seen their talents and their damage and their hearts’ desires. And he had decided to offer it to them, like a demon at a crossroads, promised to gift them with what they wanted most in the world, Charles and Camilla and Bunny and Richard and Francis. How could they have said no?

In Henry, he had seen the most intriguing wish of all: to cast off the chains of the self, to rid himself of its boundaries and its strains and become one with everything; to live freely and fully and as uninhibited and oblivious as an animal. To allow the mind, for once, to be as it once was: a wild thing.

 

“Why are you so interested in the bacchanalia anyway?”, Francis asked, and Henry regarded him with a thoughtful look.

“I’ll tell you everything eventually, Francis”, he promised. “Give it time.”

 

Now, years too late, Francis can see it all so clearly. In some ways, one might say, the outcome had been inevitable. Henry, this ray of light, as bright and as brilliant as the sun itself. And Julian, the magnifying glass.

How could they ever have expected not to start a fire?

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Taeyn for being a wonderful person and an adorable Henry fanatic! ;) <3 To everyone else, thanks for reading! Also, comments and/or kudos make my day! ;)


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